Book Talk

Mysteries –  Dark and Light

I recently read a book I enjoyed a great deal by an author I hadn’t tried before, Jeff Long. It was an adventure/thriller with a rock climbing background titled The Wall. Long has a new book out this month, Deeper. Hell exists. It is a society geologically below the one in which we live where a lost race regains strength and plans revenge. Extreme adventure meets horror…

The Temperance Brennan series by author Kathy Reichs is the inspiration for the television show, Bones. In this new entry, Bones to Ashes, Tempe must decide if the remains found in Acadia, Canada are from a long missing friend or the work of a serial killer.

Strip Search by William Bernhardt not only features a serial killer, but one who leaves obscure mathematical formulas with the bodies. Susan Pulaski of the Las Vegas police department teams up with an autistic savant to unmask the killer’s identity.
    
Sure, it’s not very likely that the owner of a bed and breakfast in Seattle would be involved in quite so many mysteries, but I do enjoy this series by Mary Daheim. Scots on the Rocks has b&b owner Judith Flynn flying off to Scotland for a vacation. She and Cousin Renie find themselves marooned in an ancient castle above the North Sea. While their husbands are fishing there is an explosion; the dead body they discover involves Judith in yet another investigation.

Speaking of unlikely, caterer Goldy Schulz finds the body of Aspen’s former district attorney in the corner of the library where she is setting up a holiday breakfast. Goldy, as usual, searches for murderers amongst the delicacies in Sweet Revenge by Diane Mott Davidson.

There’s more fun in Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. When an ex-mobster asks Shane (one name only) to protect his niece, he didn’t mention that she was a grown woman with a career. He also didn’t mention that he might have lost five million bucks in Agnes’ house.

Ex-Anchorage cop Nik Kane is hired to investigate the death of a young woman found strangled to death at the feet of an up-and-coming young Native politician. He is not talking, but if he is the murderer, why are the local cops harassing Nik? Read Capitol Offense by Mike Doogan.

Emotionally scarred after being kidnapped, held captive, and tortured for ten days by a serial killer, Archie Sheridan was inexplicably released by Gretchen Lowell, who then turned herself in. When teenaged girls are snatched off the streets of Portland, and Archie realizes there is a new killer, he finds himself in a complex game with two killers and an ambitious reporter.  HeartSick is the first thriller by Chelsea Cain.

When the keynote speaker at a symposium for dog show judges is found floating face down in the hot tub, Melanie Travis takes matters into her own hands and away from the baffled police. Hounded to Death, by Laurien Berenson, is the fourteenth in the Melanie Travis mystery series.

Virginia Cooper
Adult Services